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ISSUE Project Room in December

From ISSUE Project Room:

WED 12.01 – SAT 12.04 – Darmstadt Essential Repertoire
Darmstadt “Classics of the Avant Garde” presents its third annual week of Essential Repertoire at ISSUE Project Room, an adoration and exploration of the experimental tradition in classical music, named “one of the most significant presentations of the season” by Time Out New York. Over four evenings, various historical approaches to the experimental impulse are explored via some of its canon’s most durable works and its most accomplished practitioners.

This year’s festival kicks off with an evening of Luciano Berio’s Sequenzas for solo instrument, performed by a generation-defining group of players in New York’s booming new music community. Rare readings of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s pioneering electroacoustic works, Kontakte and Mikrophonie, by Iktus Percussion Quartet, and music from the New York School performed by the venerable S.E.M ensemble follow over the next two evenings. The festival finale is a double bill of two cornerstones of New York minimalism—Tom Johnson’s An Hour for Piano performed by Joseph Kubera, paired with a suite of the Knee Plays from Philip Glass/Robert Wilson’s landmark opera, Einstein on the Beach, arranged and led by protean violinist Mary Rowell.

WED 12.01 – Luciano Berio: Sequenzas I – X (1958 – 1984)
Luciano Berio (1925-2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition Sinfonia for voices and orchestra and his series of numbered solo pieces titled Sequenza) and also for his pioneering work in electronic music. Luciano Berio has always looked at his Sequenzas as building blocks among his other compositions. These solo works, sometimes written for specific performers, exist as elements of other, larger works or as platforms upon which he’s built extensive structures.
Line-up includes: Claire Chase (flute), Shelley Burgon (harp), Daisy Press (voice), Stephen Gosling (piano), Chris McIntyre (trombone) John Pickford Richards (viola), James Austin Smith (oboe), Jennifer Choi (violin), Joshua Rubin (clarinet), and Gareth Flowers (trumpet).
Tickets: $10.00 ($9 Advance, $8 Members)

THU 12.02 – Works by Karlheinz Stockhausen
Pre-concert recorded lecture (from 1960) by Stockhausen on his approach to electronic music. Program includes: Gesang der Jünglinge (1955-56) feat. a four-channel version prepared by the Computer Music Center, Columbia University Kontakte (1958-60) feat. Denise Fillion (piano), Chris Graham (percussion), and Levy Lorenzo (electronics) Mikrophonie (1964-65) feat. the Iktus Percussion Quartet with Levy Lorenzo and Elad Shniderman (electronics) Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his ground-breaking work in electronic music, aleatory (controlled chance) in serial composition, and musical spatialization.

One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School, his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential, not only on composers of art music, but also on jazz and popular-music artists. His works, composed over a period of nearly 60 years, eschew traditional forms. In addition to electronic music both with and without live performers they range from miniatures for musical boxes through works for solo instruments, songs, chamber music, choral and orchestral music, to a cycle of seven full-length operas.
Tickets: $10.00 ($9 Advance, $8 Members)

Special Thanks to Terry Pender and the Computer Music Center, Columbia University.

FRI 12.03 – Orchestra of S.E.M. Ensemble
Program includes: Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1958) by John Cage; For 1, 2, or 3 People (1964) by Christian Wolff; and Kontrabandt (1967) by Peter Kotik.
Led and founded by director Petr Kotik, the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble is dedicated to the performance and advancement of new music. Kotik established The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble in 1992, with its Carnegie Hall performance of “A Tribute to John Cage.” Since this concert, SEM Orchestra has toured Europe five times and, in 1997, performed at the Toru Takemitsu Memorial Concert in Tokyo. In New York, the orchestra has presented major concerts at Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, and Willow Place Auditorium in Brooklyn. SEM Orchestra has released recordings on Wergo, Asphodel, and Dog w/a Bone labels.
Tickets: $10.00 ($9 Advance, $8 Members)

SAT 12.04 – Tom Johnson: An Hour For Piano (1971) and Philip Glass: Knee Plays from Einstein on the Beach (1976)
Line-up includes: Joseph Kubera (piano); Mary Rowell (violin, arrangement), Geoff Burleson and Joseph Kubera (organs); Eve Beglarian and Ekmeles vocal ensemble; and Jeffrey Gavett, director (voices).

Tom Johnson (b. 1939, Colorado) is credited with coining the term “minimalism” in relation to music. As the term spread from his Village Voice column into widespread use, early minimalists—Reich and Glass especially—began to develop their sound into compositional material, rather than adhering to the radically strict, austere processes of early minimalism. Johnson, on the other hand, stuck with rational processes, often using mathematical or logical devices, deterministic generative techniques and formulas from fractal geometry. He is known for his operas The Four Note Opera (1972) and Trigonometry (1997), as well as his two-hour oratorio the Bonhoffer Oratorium (1996). Recent releases include Rational Melodies (New World Records).

Poet and UBUWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith called An Hour for Piano “a philosophical exercise which calls into question our relationship to music as a listener,” while John Rockwell, in a Times review, called it “a work that may well emerge in time as some sort of monument of the minimal-structural era of Manhattan experimental music of the late 60s and early 70s.” A trance-like series of repeated cells, the piece alternately calls to mind early musical minimalism and the “furniture music” of Erik Satie.
Tickets: $10.00 ($9 Advance, $8 Members)

TUE 12.07 – Littoral: Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch: Ten Walks/Two Talks
Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch are the authors of Ten Walks/Two Talks (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). They recently completed another collaborative manuscript called Conversations over Stolen Food. Fitch’s Not Intelligent, but Smart: Rethinking Joe Brainard is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive. Cotner lives in Brooklyn, NY; Fitch, in Laramie, WY, where he’s an assistant professor in the U. of Wyoming’s MFA Program.
Tickets: FREE

Established in 2006, ISSUE’s Littoral program is a monthly series that pairs innovative contemporary writers with musicians, sound, and video artists. Littoral promotes critical dialogue that examines the intersection of these artistic disciplines, bringing together distinctive artists and uniting diverse audiences from NYC’s innovative creative community. ISSUE’s Littoral Series is made possible, in part, through generous support from The Casement Fund and the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York’s 62 counties.

WED 12.08 (7:00PM) – ISSUE Project Room Holiday Party
Join ISSUE in celebrating our new Executive Director Ed Patuto w/ special performance by Artist-in-Residence Richard Garet.
Tickets: FREE

THU 12.09 – Ingar Zach “Dans les arbres”
“There’s no end to the delights of this quite magical disc. The finest composition, like improvisation, ultimately relies on intuition, and these players seem to have an innate grasp of the right combination of sounds and textures. Dans les arbres must be one of the finest ECM Improv releases – indeed, releases from any label – in recent years.” – Andy Hamilton, The Wire Magazine

This quartet stems from work that Ivar Grydeland and Ingar Zach (of the SOFA record label) created while studying for their Master’s degree in Chamber Music at the Norwegian Academy of Music between 2001 and 2003. Around the time they gave their graduate concerts, Christian Wallumrød’s “Sofienberg Variations” (ECM 1809) was released. Grydeland and Zach soon began to record with Wallumrød.

Parallel to their duo, Grydeland and Zach were also working with bassist Tonny Kluften in a project-based ensemble with the obscure name, No Spaghetti Edition. In 2003, No Spaghetti Edition released their third CD (“Real Time Satellite Data”, SOFA513). On this release and on the following tour and concerts, French clarinettist Xavier Charles was a guest. In early July 2004 they had their first meeting as a quartet. 16 months later they met for another project with No Spaghetti Edition—recording the CD “Sketches of a Fusion” (SOFA520) with Tonny Kluften and the Canadian improviser, Martin Tétreault.

In July 2006 Charles, Grydeland, Wallumrød and Zach met again. This time to work on a band sound and to compose music for the present release. The CD is called “Dans les Arbres” and it’s also the introduction of the quartet by the same name: Dans les Arbres.
Tickets: $10.00 ($9 Advance, $8 Members)

FRI 12.10 – Artist-in-Residence Richard Garet
Richard Garet serves as ISSUE Project Room’s Artist-in-Residence October through December 2010. Garet’s works interweave multiple media including moving image, sound, live performances, and photography. Even though Garet’s work suits the standard gallery setting, many of his other activities as an artist explore the various practices of experimental sound and video performance.
Tickets: FREE

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